The German government has proposed regulations that will oblige local ISPs to apply a government-mandated block list.
The proposal, from the Ministry for Families, is designed to prevent access to child pornography. Federal Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen told a conference in Berlin that a "binding agreement" with major …

At first, I was torn..

...between thinking that such a system should at least operate in some way that is democratically accountable, versus the problem of giving such power into the hands of the government.

Then I realised that this dilemma is exactly why I don't believe that such systems should be built in the first place. Bollocks to censorship. You don't build prison walls around all your citizens just because some of them might some day do something wrong. You can only punish people for real crimes, not hypothetical ones.

Don't mention the war

state sponsored censorship

This is how it begins...

Now, watch as other EU nations join in (if they haven't alread) with their own state-mandated 'block lists'. This is how it begins. The war on child porn. Who will argue? So it happens. And slowly the remit widens. And widens.

Clearly Definable?

But the IWF's fuck up with Wikipedia and now this mess with the IA suggests that it isn't clearly definable. When sites are blocked because something is "potentially in breach" and when challenged the IWF back down and there is no apparent challenge in the courts of the image then the issue as to what actually constitutes child pornography gets brushed under the carpet (Is any image of a child which a paedophile finds arousing pornographic?).

As all these lists are "secret" we have no idea if they really are just blocking child pornography as they claim....

Die Ursula muss zurück in die Wuthöhle

Geez, no! Kiddy porn is illegal in this country, period. It is a vile, vile thing and people who engage in its production and distribution need to be prosecuted, and they are. Nevertheless, blocking the web is government induced censorship and we cannot have that. I do not need my government to tell a company I pay for being able to look at the internet what I am allowed to see. This is not China, remember?

"mission creep..."

> The minister rejected arguments that future censorship concerns are any reason to avoid applying a system to control access to content universally regarded as repugnant. "Child pornography is a problem issue and clearly identifiable,"

Yes, and nobody's arguing with that. But the point is that once you start establishing the principle that a "problem" issue can be blocked by Governmental fiat it is not at all difficult to find other "problem issues" that also "need" to be blocked.

@ David Wilkinson

Exactly. With that approach, law-abiding USERS draw the line by reporting illegal activity to the authorities who can then prosecute, just like in the offline world. They do not have lines drawn for them by an authority they cannot check on — as I would expect the gov to find a way to get around the laws concerning freedom of information, via some homeland security scheme. That would make sense IIGTR, otherwise there would be lists of blocked sites available to the public, which defies the logic of having them blocked in the first place.

Hmm....

"Child pornography is a problem issue and clearly identifiable".

That's not true. Most laypeople believe that "child pornography" automatically refers to pictures of children being molested, when in fact many countries also prohibit any material which involves children in sexual poses or in a state of simple nudity.

@ Andrew Crystall

UK has highest rate of underage pregnancies

So to stop this - and also prevent the criminal offence known as 'Statutory Rape' - surely the idiots in charge should be encouraging us to play on our computers rather than blanket-banning anything even remotely "adult" in nature?

Instead ZaNew Labour think it better to criminalise any consenting ADULTS than to actually stick to their original Manifesto pledge from the first time they got re-elected - to get tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.

Last time I checked, schoolboys getting schoolgirls pregnant was not the same as BDSM. Obviously what little I remember from Biology and Sociology when I was at school & college is wrong, since I didn't think that stopping me (potentially) looking at hardcore porn online would prevent girls getting up the duff and women getting attacked.

I am so glad I have Wacky Jaqui and her jackbooted (oops, mustn't say that - some people get off on jackboots!) thugs to keep me nice and safe in their little cotton wool world while their Chancellor throws all the remaining money in the UK into the bottonmless coffers of the banks...

ps mentioning jackbooted thugs was in no way intended as a slur on our own dear Moderatrix, please forgive me grovel grovel.